1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network photograph service system which provides digital photograph services such as a printing service on a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a form of a digital photograph service, a network photograph service which stores (registers) a digital image of a user in a service provider system and receives a printing order or the like via a network such as the Internet is known.
In such a service, when a user requests registration of digital images from a laboratory upon requesting film development for example, a registration ID is issued to the user. The photographs recorded on the film are digitized at the laboratory or at a dedicated service center, stored in a system of the service provider, and disclosed on the network. The user can browse through the registered images by accessing the system of the service provider via the network.
Meanwhile, users of electronic mail have been increasing, following the spread of the Internet. Basically, only text can be sent and received as electronic mail via the Internet. Therefore, in order to send and receive binary data such as an image, the binary data need to be converted into text data and a recipient needs to carry out a reverse conversion. As formats defining such conversion, Base64, BinHex, UUENCODE and the like are known. Since this kind of conversion function is incorporated in electronic mail software in many cases, a user without special knowledge of the conversion formats can easily send and receive an image. For this reason, photographs recorded by digital cameras are sent daily, being attached to electronic mail messages.
However, in order to send a photograph recorded by a film camera as electronic mail, the photograph recorded on a film needs to be digitized first so that binary data representing the photograph are obtained. In order to obtain binary data, a user can digitize a photograph by himself/herself by purchasing equipment such as a film scanner. However, as a more convenient method, the user can have an image recorded in a recording medium such as a CD-ROM by such a digital photograph service as described the above. Alternatively, when an image downloading service is provided in a digital photograph service, an image being viewed may be downloaded to a personal computer of the user.
However, it is time-consuming for the user to obtain a recording medium such as a CD-ROM after placing an order for a service to output an image to the recording medium. It is possible to request the service to output images to a recording medium upon requesting image registration. However, in this case, since the image that is desired to be attached to an electronic mail message is not determined at the dine of the request for image registration, all the images end up being recorded, which is costly.
On the other hand, in the method wherein an image is obtained by downloading, only a necessary image can be obtained as required. However, since an image data size is generally large, time and cost (a communication charge) are required when downloading the image to a personal computer. Furthermore, time and cost are also required when the downloaded image is sent to a mail server as an attachment to an electronic mail message.